This is the area of our home that Chelsea calls the “command center.” Elements of it have moved around during the never-ending renovation process, but this is where it all landed for the time being.
Our whole family jots important notes down here, and then those notes get converted to digital memos on our tablet. Initially, I didn't completely understand why. It seemed really redundant. Chelsea, however, said that we need to keep tabs on our home stuff remotely since we travel so much. She even installed a camera that detects and records motion in our living room so we can be updated if anything suspicious happens while we're away.
I'd think that the obnoxious rooster and goats and sheep and giant German Shepherd and Doberman would be enough of a deterrent to would-be intruders, but apparently not.
Seems everything is being digitized lately, so we're going ahead and joining the “smart home” bandwagon.
Which brings us to our sponsor for today, Leeo. They have this $49 device called the Smart Alert that plugs into a regular outlet and listens for your smoke alarm or carbon monoxide detector to go off, then sends an alert via an app on your phone.
When I tried to explain to Some Boy what carbon monoxide and smoke detector monitoring is, he went through the general realization process that I'd imagine most adults go through.
Ooooh, what a fun toy!
Wait. This is actually pretty important stuff.
Phew, glad I got that covered.
If the app is unable to reach us when the alarm goes off, we can set it to send push notifications to our emergency contact list to notify them. There are 1,298,000 fires in the US every year, with $11.6 billion in property damage and 15,775 civilian injuries. Beyond that, 500,000 pets are affected by house fires each year! That’s particularly scary to us, considering that we often leave our dogs in the house while we run a few quick errands.
It’s a huge relief to know that our neighbors could potentially come save our dogs if they were left inside and a fire broke out. Those trusty neighbors have actually been a BIG help in dealing with all of the animals while we travel, so this is something we'd happily do for each other. The device also monitors the temperature and humidity in our home so we can always check on conditions.
On top of all that, Leeo doubles as a nightlight and has multi-colored lights that can be activated as notifications through Leeo's IFTTT (“If This Then That”) online channel. For example, I can set the Smart Alert color to start glowing red if someone tags me in a photo on Facebook.
That way I can be the first to add hilarious comments and beat everybody else to the punch. Or screen any pictures from my mother-in-law.
It's pretty great knowing that I have all this stuff locked down at home, so I can get back to what really matters in life. The very family I'm trying to keep safe.
Do you have smart home safety monitoring setup in your house?